


Optical Illusions

by ohmyohpioneer



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2735048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyohpioneer/pseuds/ohmyohpioneer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian discovers that he quite likes Swan in spectacles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Optical Illusions

He supposes it’s because he has never had the occasion to spend quiet moments, murmurs in the midst of their chaotic life, with her that he hasn’t seen them until now.

Solid frames with arms and hinges and curved glass meant to bend and refract light and he hadn’t known until now this small piece of Swan. Hadn’t thought to imagine the black outline dwarfing her delicate features and magnifying the intensity of her irises. 

And the smile that he can feel tighten the corners of his eyes is because he sees her just a bit more clearly now.

\--- 

He is walking down Main Street, taking in the night and the quiet and letting it soak into him in a way that is rare in Storybrooke, when he sees the dim lamplight. 

Her profile is a cutout, hunched slightly at the shoulders and for a moment he studies the picture she makes, graceful even in her weariness.  With a glance at the clock tower, he notes it is much too late for Swan to remain in her office. 

He pushes into the station, and mentally scolds Emma for keeping the entrance unlocked so late, but knows his gentle reprimand – for her safety – would fall on deaf ears. A battle long fought, n’er won.

“Come on then, Swan,” he bellows warmly into the empty space, “I think you’re off the clock now.”

He rounds the corner, into the glass encasement of her workspace, and watches her scratch out hasty sentences on a report. “Unless, of course, you are waiting with the express purpose of  _finally_  taking me up on my offer to show you the best way to spend a night in the brig.”

She snorts, ceases her writing, and finally looks up at him.

Perched on her nose are a thick pair of spectacles not unlike those he’d discovered in her box of childhood treasures.

“Those new, Swan?” He feels stunned at seeing the way they make her eyelashes look longer, the way they take years from her, make her softer somehow.

“Huh?” Her brow furrows in confusion.

“The spectacles, love,” he points kindly to the current source of his amazement – it’s something new with her everyday.

“Oh,” her hand darts quickly to feel the corrective lenses on her face, as if surprised herself to find them there. “Yeah, my contacts were killing me.”

“How’s that?”

But she just lets her lip curl at the corner in that delicate way of hers that has him wanting to press his thumb against it, his lips to the opposite corner. She rustles the papers into a neat stack before clicking off the light and standing from her chair. 

“Come on, Lois Lane,” she grabs his hand, but his eyes won’t leave hers, “You can walk me home.”

\---

When he wakes, it is to a dark sky and an empty bed.

There’s a chill to the air, a dampness that speaks of fall and seaswells and he breathes it in, lets it fill in cracks and wake his sleep-addled mind. There’s a dim glow seeping under the bedroom door, and he glances at the red numbers of the clock on the side table. Quarter to five. 

The small hood light above the island stove is on – the only illumination in the open kitchen, and beneath it, Swan is steeped in the groggy rays.

“What are you doing up, love?” His voice is rough edges, and he can only imagine she’s as exhausted. 

Her glasses do little to make her look anymore awake, and, in fact, with her hair pulled hastily up and a large woolen sweater draped over her, they add to the appearance of making her look infinitely smaller.

The spatula in her hand hovers sleepily above the pan of scrambled eggs, and she shakes her head as if she’s only just now realized she is awake, cooking breakfast.

“I know you and Henry have an early start,” she blinks some of the fogginess from her eyes, “And I also know that if I don’t make you something, you’ll both eat Toaster Strudels.”

And it’s a ridiculous thought, but for a moment, he is outside of his own body; for a moment, he is watching himself watch this woman with her ridiculous glasses and tired eyes and morning-weary shoulders, and she’s never been more  _real_. He’s never loved her quite as acutely as he does in this breath, as he does watching her push her glasses up the bridge of her nose and yawn widely in checkered pajama pants.

So he rounds the island to press a firm kiss to her temple, while she hums sweetly. “You’re amazing, Swan,” he mouths the words against the side of her head, lets his lips brush the arms of her spectacles and the messy wisps of her hair. “Bloody brilliant.”

She laughs, husky, and moves to retrieve the toast that has just popped up. “Slow your roll, pirate. It’s just eggs.”

\---

It’s been a hell of a day.

He and Scarlet have run over hill and dale chasing an errant dwarf, and between the bloody Knave and the sodding angry miner, he can feel every last step pounding at his feet and working its way up to the area behind his eyes. Wonderful.

Relief so deep and so tangible he can nearly touch it washes over him when he pushes open the apartment door to find Emma curled into the very corner of her massive couch, silence gorgeous and heavy blanketing the space.

It is this exhalation, this fragment of his life he never thought would be possible. It is almost too generous to believe he could be given Emma, thick socks pulled to her knees, errant bangs falling across her face, tucked behind her ears, tortoise frames slipping down her nose, with a novel nestled in her hands.

She looks up at him, all soft lines and eyeglasses, and his life is in such sharp focus he thinks he must have not truly seen anything in the hundreds of years leading up to now.

“Hey,” she greets. 

And he slouching onto the couch next to her, burying himself against the radiant warmth of her, and his forehead finds her shoulder, her neck, on instinct.

“Rough day?” She asks against the crown of his head, and he sighs at the instant relief of pressure.

“Will Bloody Scarlet insists I run like a ponce,” he informs her, looking up and examining the glasses at close range – one of his new favorite pastimes – noting how they don't quite hug her nose as tightly as they should, how the bottoms rest gently against the apples of her cheeks leaving red marks when she removes them. “I think he’s just sensitive about the fact he can’t find a pair of trousers that fit him.”

She giggles, and her spectacles slide closer to the end of her nose, and it’s so intensely delightful, he can’t stop himself when he reaches up to the spot where the lenses are joined to press them gently back up the slope of her nose. 

Her eyes nearly cross, following the slow movement, and the sigh that escapes her is both contented and hitched.

She drops her book to the floor when a muted thump, and smooths her own thumb over the scar under her eye. Her face is so close he can see that there’s a fingerprint smudged in the corner of her left lens, and he conjures the image of smudges from his own person marring her glasses as he presses intense kisses against her mouth. 

Emma, as always, is one step ahead of him, and he can feel the frames bite into his cheeks where her thumb was just breaths ago as she opens her mouth under his.

“Have I told you I quite like these, Swan?” He asks as he drops a kiss at the frame between her eyes. “Perhaps you can leave them on for a bit?”

And when her laughter shakes her once more, he watches the trail they make and lets them rest at the tip of her nose while she hovers above him. 


End file.
